good

TOKYO--Window shopping in the tony Tokyo Midtown mall today, I came across these beautifully crafted speakers from Yamaha, which just picked up a Japan Good Design Award for them.

Announced last month at IFA 2011 in Berlin, the Yamaha Restio ISX-800 is a free-standing speaker system for iPod, iPhone, CD, USB, and external sources like radio, TV, and game consoles.

The Restio was designed by Yamaha's Masaharu Ono and has a small, colored LED screen that displays the time or track number for an audio selection. It also has an alarm clock function.

The player is about 40 inches tall on its stand, which can be removed to mount the main unit on a wall. You can get a better idea of its size in the promo vid below from IFA.

Yamaha's list price for the Restio is a hefty 88,000 yen (about $1,150). But the speaker sound was excellent during the brief time I spent with it, and I'd definitely take one home if it could fit in my suitcase.

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NEW YORK--Yahoo and ABC News announced a news distribution pact here today, with some bonus teamwork thrown into the mix.

ABC News will distribute some of its content via Yahoo News, and the deal kicked off today with the airing of "Good Morning America." While that may sound ho-hum at first, the companies said they will blend their news-gathering divisions in several ways.

According to Ross Levinsohn, executive vice president of the Americas at Yahoo, the news departments from each organization will work together on developing content for Yahoo as well as for ABC News sites. ABC will … Read more

One size daily deals don't fit everyone--not even Groupon.

In an effort to diversify revenue and maintain its rapid growth, Groupon, which has temporarily shelved its $750 million public offering, is fast evolving its business model. Recently Groupon deals have gone mobile, real-time, and location aware.

Today's launch of "Groupon Goods," however, marks the company's most aggressive departure away from its core daily deal offers. With Groupon Goods, the Chicago based company seems to be moving into full-blown e-commerce. If fully realized, that would put the company, valued at $20 billion, head-to-head with online retail … Read more

Everyone knows food and gas prices can vary by location, but the same is often true of prescription drugs.

GoodRX, which launched a new Web site today at the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco, aims to show consumers where they can find the lowest price on prescription drugs by ZIP code.

"A lot of innovation looks at price transparency and convenience for health procedures, but nobody is looking to improve the consumer experience," said Doug Hirsch, co-founder of the Los Angeles-based startup. "We believe this first product from GoodRX can help every consumer in the U.S. easily save money."

Pulling data from state and federal agencies and from pharmacies directly, GoodRX says it analyzes more than a million prices for more than 6,000 drugs at 25,000 pharmacy locations in the United States. This allows consumers to compare prices on specific drugs based on where they live. … Read more

Today's news from overseas about Nintendo's slightly redesigned and price-dropped Wii isn't much of a surprise, with the Wii U around the corner. Neither is the new Wii's dropping of backward-compatible support for the GameCube and its peripherals. In fact, it nearly comes as a footnote.

Honestly, some people might be shocked that the Wii can even play GameCube games at all. Those small discs, looking like giveaways from some '90s music magazine, slot into the current Wii's disc slot (even though DVDs won't work). Even the GameCube controllers--and other peripherals--plug in via a door on the side. That's generous of Nintendo, but hardly necessary. Unless you have a large collection of GameCube discs, most memorable Nintendo games are easily gotten via Virtual Console downloads, re-issued Wii-ified versions, or improved franchise sequels.

Do we care about backward-compatibility in our game consoles? Well, maybe we used to. It's getting harder and harder to care. Here's why.… Read more

Both Apple and Android have been capturing more mobile customers in the enterprise arena, but Apple's iOS has been the dominant force thanks to growing demand for the iPad, according to mobile-software provider Good Technology.

Released yesterday, Good's latest quarterly data report (PDF) found that more smartphones and tablets in general have been flooding the workplace. But Apple's iOS has led the way, grabbing 80 percent of all device activations in the enterprise seen by Good during the second quarter. That marks an increase from just less than 70 percent in the first quarter.

The iPad itself (… Read more

Flor, the green carpet manufacturer, announced Thursday that it's opened a fifth brick-and-mortar store, this one in Dallas.

Like its other retail stores in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and Santa Monica, the Dallas Flor store will offer a recycling drop-off for customers to return worn Flor items.

Flor sells carpets that are made from either wool or mostly renewable and recycled content, with an end goal of eventually making all its carpets entirely from sustainable materials.

In an age when most carpeting comes with a high amount of unhealthy VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), FLOR carpets also either meet or … Read more

Electronic Arts believes the end is near for in-store game buying.

Speaking to Eurogamer in an interview published yesterday, EA Sports Vice President Andrew Wilson said there will be a time when gamers decide against heading to a local game retailer, and get all their titles digitally instead.

"There will come a day where I think that people will stop going into [U.K. game retailer] Game and GameStop," Wilson told Eurogamer. "And I use those purely as examples of retail. It's important for retailers and us to understand what the consumer wants in the future.&… Read more

Team Fortress 2 has gone free, and it's staying that way forever.

Valve, the game's developer, announced the news on its Web site yesterday. The company said that users can play as much of the game as they'd like for as long as they like at no charge.

Team Fortress 2 was first released in 2007. The game is an online action title, allowing users to form teams and take on other players. It is also one of the most critically acclaimed games ever released, earning a score of 92 out of 100 on CNET sister site … Read more